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Channel interfaces

Examples of a channel include a messaging service, voice service, web portal, or mobile portal. Customers interact with Pega Platform™ applications through a variety of channels. Pega Platform provides options for configuring interfaces for each channel. A channel interface allows you to adjust your application to your specific business needs by creating tailored and interactive user interfaces. Channels are created from templates that include predefined layouts and navigation for use in your application. 

Conversational channels

Conversational channels help organizations reach additional users. With conversational channels, application users can interact with a Pega Platform application to obtain help, request a service, and report or solve an issue by using the following digital channels:

  • Facebook Messenger
  • WhatsApp Messenger
  • Twitter
  • Apple Business Chat
  • SMS/MMS (Twilio)
  • Embedded chat window
  • Amazon Alexa
  • Email

Channels also allow users to interact with your application by using Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant™ (IVA) and Pega Email Bot. Pega Intelligent Virtual Assistant understands intent and conversational language for dynamic conversations with your customers regardless of the channel in which they start or end. Pega Email Bot can automatically detect the intent of an email and picks up relevant information to automate the processing with a personalized response. You can configure additional IVA functionality through the Pega API.

Note: After you configure a webchat or Alexa channel, provide users with a channel for communicating with IVA and, indirectly, with the application, through a simple question and answer form to collect information from users. To learn more about IVA, see Implementing an intelligent virtual assistant for a conversation channel. To learn more about building a conversational channel, see Conversational channels.

Configure channels

The Channels and interfaces landing page allows you to create, view, and edit all types of channel interfaces. You can download new components (such as the Alexa channel component) from Pega Marketplace as well. The Lock icon on a channel indicates that the channel component is not yet added to the application. 

In the following image, click the + icons to learn more about the types of channels you can create.

Channel configuration on case types

You can also create a channel-specific IVA process in stages within a case life cycle.

For example, you may want to add a process for users who interact with your application through a Facebook messenger. You can add a channel process so that when users enter a specific command in Messenger a case opens in your application. You can select any case that is defined for your Pega Platform application. 

Create menu add digital messaging
Note: Once you click the More icon on the stage, the Add create process or Add channel process options list only those channels that you have previously added to your application. To learn more about adding channels to a stage, see Adding a conversational channel to a case type process.

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